With massive growth of the numbers of devices and traffic volume, the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems are being developed to enable a networked society, where information can be accessed and data can be shared anywhere and anytime, by anyone with anything. In current standardization work of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), several New Radio (NR) frame structures have been proposed.
Each of the proposed NR frame structures may include a corresponding type of feedback timing. As used herein, the term “feedback timing” refers to timing used for feeding back any suitable data, such as, an acknowledgement (Ack)/negative acknowledgement (Nack), a channel status indicator (CSI), a channel quality indicator (CQI), a rank indicator (RI), a sounding reference signal (SRS), or any other suitable control data. One design concept of the feedback timing in the NR frame structures is to enable an early acknowledgement report (for example, in several microseconds) after the end of downlink data transmission. Early uplink data transmission (for example, in several microseconds) is also enabled after reception of uplink resource assignment.
However, an increasingly wide range of applications may have variable requirements and characteristics. It will be challenging to use a common NR frame structure with fixed feedback timing in a communication network.